March 5th 2007

The Rebirth of My.Netscape

Posted by Tom Drapeau

› tags: api, Development, My Netscape, MyNetscape

At long last, the Netscape team is proud to release a Beta of the next generation My.Netscape, at: http://my.netscape.com

This site will be live tomorrow (Tuesday 3/6).

My.Netscape will retain its identity as a personalized homepage, with a minimum of ad clutter. The initial release will in fact have no ads at all! Our programming staff has worked hard to create a framework that allows for scalability and UI elegance.

We invite any and all feedback on bugs in the product and suggestions for how to better it. We will have a link to a feedback form to help in communicating your thoughts back to the development team, prominently featured at the top of the My Netscape page. We have a long list of extra features that we will add to the My Netscape experience as the weeks go by, but please do let us know how we are doing. We appreciate it!

We are also hard at work at finishing a migration feature that allows previous users of My.Netscape to import their stock portfolio and favorite bookmark preferences. We hope to have that available soon, keep an eye out.

In Figure 1 below, you will see the left side of the My.Netscape screen, including a configured Weather module. The modules can be dragged and dropped to enable easy configuration of your layout. Logging into the site with your existing Netscape.com username and password will allow you to save your module layouts and settings to view them from anywhere.

Figure 1:

In Figure 2, you will see the Add Content layer, which will allow you to easily add modules to your My.Netscape screen. We have just under 100 modules that can be added already, from the mainstream to the off beat, from niche categories to generic widgets. For those who have favorite RSS feeds that aren't listed, you can use our generic RSS feed reader. In most cases, it's as easy as clicking Add!

We hope that all of the folks who patiently waited for this release will enjoy using the new product. There's even a module for a game that many of you requested we resurrect when we launched the new Netscape.com last summer. :-)

Figure 2:

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Comments

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11:47AMJAMES M. TOBIN

That's great now how can I get rid of AOL mail. This is the lousiest service I have ever had. Half of the time I cannot send my e-mails out and sometimes I cannot open the e-mails I have recv'd. Also it will not send to some of my recipients add.
Thanks

5:51PMTheodore Freund

You once had a what's new link. What happened to it? Will it be available?

8:17PMChuck Reasor

I hope this version is more stable than the 7.2 or the Browser that I'm currently using. Far too many crashes. The new site looks very promsing. I've used Netscape from their start but the last year or so has been very disappointing.
Thanks

4:55PMSam Lopez

Are there any patches for 7.2?
I prefer 7.2 over 8.02.

1:14AMJoel Weinberger

Does this mean you will begin supporting Netscape again? Everyone tells me that Netscape is no longer being supported and that I should switch. Based on what has been happening, they seem right. Reassure me that they are wrong.

9:55AMStephen Donner

Oh man! As someone who worked on the last vestige of My Netscape (you know, when it was still running NPE!), I'm happy to see it looks like you did a great job with this!

Congrats; the product is worth the wait!

1:51AMSimon

If I detect a bug on MyNetscape later on, how do I notify you? The Weatherchannel feed on my personal netscape page was giving horribly inaccurate information for over a year. I attempted several AOL & netscape client services &/or technical support contacts but none of them could assist. The Help section and FAQ didn't provide an email contact or phone number either. I like using mynetscape over MSN and Yahoo but the support has been lacking. When you guys took it away, I thought for sure it would be gone permanently. It's good to know that it'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.

6:24AMSearch Engines WEB

My.Netscape will retain its identity as a personalized homepage, with a minimum of ad clutter. The initial release will in fact have no ads at all

6:31AMSearch Engines WEB

/////My.Netscape will retain its identity as a personalized homepage, with a minimum of ad clutter. The initial release will in fact have no ads at all
----------------------------

There is nothing wrong with having ads or even a degree of ad clutter if the ads are quality.

Most members should understand that it is costly to provide this quality, free service and Netscape has every right to obtain an ROI and profit - to invest and eventually help make a good service even better.

One suggestion for the rebirth would be to allow a more customizable and widgetly profile page for the Netscape members.

The Members Profile pages should be more like a MyBlogLog or MySpace exeperiece rather than a Digg experience ;-)

1:36PMdavid

I'm a little puzzled: Why was My Netscape taken down at all. When the notice went up that MyNetscape would not be available in order to make an upgrade, I thought that that meant it would be down for 2 hours, 6 hours, maybe 36 hours...but that was TWO MONTHS ago!! I appreciate that Netscape felt that improvements were necessary, and has made them (though, MyPortfolio won't be available YET!!). Why not wait until today to bring down the old MyNetscape, and bring up the new??

9:00AMAndre

Looks interesting. In the end I might be coming back from Google to Netscape again. Who knwos... :-)

10:13AMHoot

Its too late. Ive changed to another webpage!

11:42AMMichael

I am especially dissapointed that you no longer offer email. This was your most valuable asset.

6:54AMDorothy Holwager

Will this mean I can get our Netscape Mail bac? I hate this AIM I was switched to.

12:47PMtony fitzpatrick

As a very, very old member of the Netscape community I'm surprised and encouraged to hear this news....the good (idiosynratic) things about Netscape were legion, I never had any issues with speed or lost data and I'm happy to hear that in this era of never-ending technological change one thing can remain constant...NETSCAPE, even if we had to put up with an uninvited and complicated move to AIM...so what!!...it works and I'm still enjoying the old familiar look and feel.

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